What kind of police reforms do we need?

The statistics show race isn’t a big issue (black cops are just as likely to kill blacks as white cops are). The issue is police abuse of people they are arresting, regardless of race (and perhaps not regardless of class – rich people tend to get much better treated when getting arrested). There is no excuse for police to being injuring unarmed persons, even if they deserve it.

When a cop busts someone, for, as an example, passing out “under the influence” in an illegally parked car, they have to treat the guy the same way they would treat their “let’s not talk about him” uncle who sometimes gets drunk in the wrong time and place. When arresting an unarmed suspect, perhaps one freaking out at being arrested, he should treat him the way he would treat his own kid if some childish prank ended up with someone calling 911.

I think the key to improving police treatment of arrestees is an improvement in recruiting of police. The bully wannabees must be screened out before they are hired. I don’t know how you do that, but it needs to be done.

Another other key problem is blue omerta. When cops know that other cops won’t be witnesses against them, it emboldens the abusers to be abusive. The growing ubiquity of cellphone videos helps.

Body cameras will go a long way to preventing unwarranted beatings. The cameras should be on all the time, and not under the control of the wearers. Something will have to be done to protect police officers’ privacy during bathroom breaks, but pointing the cameras at the ceiling would solve that problem. edited But it can be worked out.

Akuperma, are rich people really treated better? Look what happened to Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, for a rich person to be arrested publicly is much worse emotionally. Imagine how suspects such as Richard Wigton felt when they were arrested in their offices and led away in handcuffs.

Here’s a suggestion. Anyone ordering police to “stand down” because of politics or liberal agendas should be charged with treason. I know it sounds radical, but the crime is. These politicians are committing domestic terror by proxy, and should be prosecuted big time for it.

the body cam has to be on always when on duty and should be made available to the public

The question is WHEN should it made publicly available. The camera images may only provide a partial, misleading account of what happened. Releasing images early may interfere with the investigation.]

Also, the images might contain private information that’s not appropriate for public dissemination. But that can be handled by editing out that information.

“body cameras should be on all the time without control of the wearers” Forget bathroom breaks. What about an officer texting a spouse? Talking to a confidential informant? Talking to a victim of a horrible crime who is terribly traumatized and doesn’t want their face plastered across the internet? Not to mention that body cams overwrite the footage they have every 30 min. because they just don’t have much storage. Suggesting that such footage be saved forever or uploaded to the cloud instantly is so financially and technically laughable it is not even a serious proposal.

What reforms do police need?

Before you even talk about it, if you are not committed to making their job easier in any way you can, and tackling crime by negating the causes of it, don’t even talk about changing policing or the police in general. If you want to make certain parts of policing more stringent, you need to make some parts of their job easier too.

I think there are a lot of things police departments can do better. However, I want to point out that a lot of our community (and the whole country) falls into 2 camps.

Camp 1- police officers are the bravest, best people ever. Litteral malachim who can do no wrong (I might say they theoretically can do wrong, but good luck finding a case that happened outside of an hour before shabbos where I thought the cops were wrong)

Camp 2- I got a ticket once, or a cop was mean to me, and therefore I am to the far left of BLM, and I hold all cops are Nazis.

We need to realize that police are just people who do a job that while scary, is not actually that dangerous relative to most jobs people hold (farming, roofing, and trucking are all kill more people every year). There are a lot of things (using qualified immunity, using civil asset forfeiture, de-escalation tactics, general community relations) that the police need to do a MUCH better job of. That being said, most police officers are wonderful people, not racist or anti-Semitic, and do a job which is lemaisa dangerous and scary, for little pay and horrific side effects. They keep us safe, and for that, they deserve hakoras hatov. But they are not perfectly good or perfectly bad.

Yes, transparency in police practices and personnel records is important but real change requires requires the following:
1. Police departments need to establish and publish arrest “Rules of Engagement” (hor lack of a better term) detailing all procedures for interaction with the public at large as well as with arrestees.
2. Individual Police officers need to be held personally responsible, both criminally and civilly, for injuries and offences committed in violation of the published rules.
3. As far as the use of deadly force is concerned, police officers should not fire their weapons unless they, themselves, are fired upon or a citizen is in imminent threat of death or grave bodily harm. I have often heard police officers claim that “their first job is to get back safe to their families at night”. Wrong! A cop’s first job is to make sure that I and other citizens get back safe to our families. If the cop can do it to, great, but it’s not in his job description.

“improvement in recruiting of police”

I am not a big Bernie Sanders fan but he got this one right when he said that we need to attract better educated police officers and that it would take big pay increases to accomplish that. This is the opposite of de-funding police, which is one of the most stupid ideas to come down the pike in, well, since Trump said that we didn’t need coronavirus tests.

A major problem is that police in much of the US have been de-funded already because of tax cuts and spending caps. For example, New York City has just over twice the population of Los Angeles, but almost four times the number of police officers. Conservatives in California de-funded police (and everything else) with Proposition 13 and the various spending limits.

I believe there had to be an off switch to protect privacy situations. For example naked person or the cop having to go to the bathroom. Im sure there are a slew of other reasons.

Yidd23 -“What kind of police reforms do we need?”

This is the Topic in 2020.
But the Topic – should be why is there So much crime in the US?
If we would focus on that issue, there would be less of an issue on Police Reform.
Simply because if there’s Less crime – we could have Less Cops!

In the United Kingdom, police officers generally do not carry firearms. I would like to see some jurisdictions try that here. Anybody who shoots a cop would be shooting an unarmed person. That should carry long sentences and would sit well with juries. I think it is worth a try, but I am not a cop, so it’s easy for me to say.

Maybe unarmed cops could wear a different colored shirt, so prospective shooters would know they are dealing with unarmed officers.

Maybe unarmed cops could wear a different colored shirt, so prospective shooters would know they are dealing with unarmed officers.

Do you seriously think that “prospective shooters” would avoid harming cops because they’re unarmed?

Huju -“In the United Kingdom, police officers generally do not carry firearms. I would like to see some jurisdictions try that here.”
That doesn’t solve anything. In the UK, when s/o wants to kill, they stab them.

“Anybody who shoots a cop would be shooting an unarmed person”
So? There isn’t Real Punishment for something like that in the US!

Dear Hu,
Capital punishment, is a means of moving illegitimate power from the hands of the people to the arm of the government. Iran and Iraq had capitol punishment, that kept petty crime at very low levels. But almost all the police, military, and government workers, were rife with corruption, and evil. The imperial solution to this, was private security forces. Less criminals will not solve a bad cop problem. And more cops will not solve the problem of career criminals.

The Officer who killed George Floyd, would not have been charged without the protests. As is, it does not look like a well run prosecution. Which is not a race issue. It is an issue with the inner workings of the Justice Departments.

BLM is largely the work of three black woman.

When the people resist arrest it becomes violent. The police are many times in very dangerous situations and we have to appreciate them

@Akuperma

“The statistics show race isn’t a big issue (black cops are just as likely to kill blacks as white cops are). The issue is police abuse of people they are arresting, regardless of race (and perhaps not regardless of class – rich people tend to get much better treated when getting arrested). There is no excuse for police to being injuring unarmed persons, even if they deserve it.”

RACE is a BIG issue. Many police departments (including the one in my small town) have been found to practice systemic Racism. It is NOT just about Killing Blacks, or Arresting Blacks.
Much of the systemic racism is the HARASSMENT of Blacks (and Latinos). No shooting ior arrest need be made, but get caught driving across the Town line while black…..DWB and you have much greater chance of being pulled over, having your license and registration run and checked fro an insurance card. You also will be illegally questioned as to why you are here and where are you going.

The State of CT has sanction our police Deoartment and abiout 20 others, issuing, fines, ordering changes, including training, asked that certain top personnel be demoted or fired, etc.

Also, you are not just as like to get ANYTHING by a Black cop as a White Cop, when your small town/suburban police force is 98% white.

Dear Gilda,
What about when a bumbling cop makes a run of the mill situation dangerous? I do not appreciate when they do that.